Lecturer

Universities in China are once again the fastest-advancing group in the THE World University Rankings. A closer look at their approaches shows why

To spare doctoral candidates protracted and unproductive efforts, Tim Marler and Dean Young suggest a pragmatic route to successful completion, while, below, Julian Kirchherr advocates a quick-and-dirty path to a viable thesis

Over time, one symbol of dehumanisation has served different purposes, finds Catherine Molineux

Jenny Pickerill argues that we need more practical suggestions on how to tackle institutions’ resistance to decolonisation

Conservative forces forget that canons and canonical understandings always evolved as science and society have progressed, says Gurminder Bhambra

Western universities must do much more to meet high-fee-paying Chinese students’ expectations, say Lena Langosch and Wilfred Dolfsma

Claims that the UK’s counterterrorism strategy targets Muslims and harms free speech are ‘nonsense’, says Prevent coordinator Chris Sybenga

Book of the week: An important study of barbarism calls for citizens to be vigilant and to resist, says Joanna Bourke

The good and evil of opium is documented in this eloquent history, writes Jonathan Mirsky

This deeply researched history of a conflict has an unfinished feel, finds Kori Schake

This unusual and intellectually invigorating book should be an essential starting point for feeling our way ahead in this field, says Shane O’Mara

Robert Montgomerie is impressed by a novel account of the backbone’s evolution

Ellie Bothwell analyses how religious institutions shape up compared with secular institutions and how they are adapting to modern mores

Up, up and away; hallowed grounds; degrees of evolution at Oxford; and making peace and making up

What are vice-chancellors’ insights into the trends, threats and priorities affecting the future of the university? Nearly 200 leaders of world-ranked universities give their views on where the sector will be in the year 2030. John Ross reports

Senior leaders must lead the charge in changing higher education’s structural disadvantages for black and minority ethnic staff and students, say Kalwant Bhopal and Sally Hunt

The UK’s new research mega-body has huge power to tackle long-standing inequalities, says its new diversity tsar Jennifer Rubin

The Migration Advisory Committee review showed little interest in understanding international students or how the UK labour market works, says Stanley Ipkiss

As students increasingly turn to essay mills to do their work, Anna McKie explores what drives this global trend and how universities are fighting it

The political craving for simple measures of learning gain is neither pedagogically informed nor sufficiently nuanced. Four academics argue that only by changing focus will the concept become useful

Yuval Noah Harari, having done the past and the future, offers us 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Author of Academically Adrift says university haters have ‘grossly distorted’ his seminal study

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

List of finalists for the ‘Oscars’ of the higher education sector released

Education can and should be central to good living. That insight is key to tackling the student mental health crisis, says Beth Guilding

As a senior lecturer in special needs education, David Bara says having first-hand experience of this world makes his lecturing and research invaluable to the field 

Patriarchy’s perpetuators; magical morphing gender; a physicist’s-eye view of the world; and what’s with all those buttons?

A study of seemingly irrational romantic feelings reveals much about sexuality in 19th-century literature, finds Charlotte Jones

Gavin Buckingham offers new lecturers tips on how to thrive in the pressurised first few months in the job

Written articles may usually be the most appropriate scholarly medium, but why are the alternatives so undervalued, asks Paul Craddock

Junior scholars need all the experiences they can get, but their digital know-how can also boost the impact of academic events, says Alice Kelly

There are reasons to be optimistic that we can start to know something about whether life exists elsewhere. But, says Charles Cockell, a more remarkable finding might be that we are exceptional

Book of the Week: Emma Rees on the key role of feelings in spurring individuals to political action

Peter J. Smith wishes the UK would adopt a US approach to making the Bard more accessible

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Zoë Waxman praises a study that debunks the comforting post-war myth of the resisting majority in countries such as France, Belgium and the Netherlands

Ugly, hateful talk must be countered with debate and argument, not bans, says Joanna Williams

A forensic linguist’s compelling and sometimes chilling case files demonstrate how criminals’ punctuation can be their undoing

Book of the week: Premiers often have a tenuous hold on power in Cabinet governments, finds Vernon Bogdanor

Bill Niven examines a project that attempted to preserve Teutonic traditions in the wake of defeat

The Dutch anthropologist discusses growing up in the sectarian Netherlands, following the hippie trail and whether religious tolerance has a future

Lecture capture has not taken off. Is it time to call in the thespians, asks Michael Marinetto

Sexual harassment of female lecturers by their students is one of the less discussed aspects of the interplay between gender and power in academia. Kate Cantrell tells her story

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Using tropes already common in the US and the UK, the Alternative for Germany has accused institutions of being in thrall to the far left

Analysis concludes universities are ‘moving towards a nearly exclusive monopoly’ over research articles

As Elsevier buys another academic workflow company, some worry about potential for publishers to ‘lock in’ scholars to their services

The UK’s highly internationalised university system – a major factor in its research success – is a treasure that must be saved from a political altar

The lecturer in sociology and policy at Aston University discusses what led her to writing about Russia and its elites

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Matthew Reisz meets Andrea Pető, recent recipient of the Madame de Staël prize, a scholar at Hungary’s Central European University whose feminist probing into the dark corners of Hungary’s past is provoking strong reactions in the ‘illiberal democracy’

Robert J. Mayhew ponders whether many careless generations have led us into a new geological era

Once he had conquered one intellectual peak, this Irishman simply found another, says Richard Joyner

German students – and academics – still go along with controversial mainstream theories in order to get ahead, researcher argues

New president of German Rectors’ Conference thinks it is crucial that all students know the European canon

European Research Council says move is to support open access and get round often lengthy publishing process

Guilt grew as green spaces became pleasurable more than productive places, says Lisa Hopkins

Book of the week: Not trusting fellow citizens to vote erodes the foundation of polity, writes John Shand

A Stoic history; influencers and other stars of the web; an English revolutionary; and chapter and verse on the books-artist nexus